In A Faint, Uncertain Voice (The Three-Fold Goddess Remix)
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: The thing about secrets- which Luke still does not understand- is this: if you keep them long enough, they begin to keep you. There are three women in Leia's life: her birth mother, her adoptive mother, and his wife. She knows just enough about each of them to make the 'truth' a hopeless tangle.


No one ever told me the same story about my mother.

Perhaps this makes sense in regards to she who bore me, given what I know now. But the truth is that the woman who so tenderly adopted me was only slightly less changeable, rendered largely a phantom before I could realize how important she was- and how much she had done for me. If the past was spoken of in my house, it was in cheerfully wrapped anecdotes of my father's childhood in the lower slopes of the Triplehorn Mountains, or of his days as a boisterous Political Apprentice in Aldera. Already the warp and weft of the tale's weaving had been changed, though as a result of convenience and the petty internal politicking of extended family, rather than the Empire.

The Emperor was never one to doctor details, being more disposed to wholesale burning.

Any child, no matter the species, is a creature full of questions. I did question- with great insistence at times, since patience is a learned skill for me rather than an inherent talent. In early preparation for my life in politics, I gained quiet acquaintance with all the ways in which adults might deflect, prevaricate, distract, or take refuge in silence. Even my parents did this, though they were very gentle, often allowing me to walk away with some small prosaic fact that I might feel a bit more steady in my own existence.

After all, people don't just appear out of nowhere.

As a child, I sometimes feared I had. Even now, I remain grateful to them for avoiding outright lies. The psychological ground beneath my feet could hardly crumble if it was never entirely solid to begin with.

My origins, so deliberately kept oblique, still contained enough detail to contradict all variations, and thus nullified themselves. I became my own vanishing act; the woman cut in two by the droid's laser, who is suddenly revealed never to have been there at all. It seemed to me at times I must have no true mother, instead springing fully formed- like the archaic patron goddess of Aldera- from my father's forehead. Again, given what I know now- Force forbid!

No. Bail Organa is my father. Even in the harsh light of Luke's blazing devotion to the truth, I am never in any doubt of that. It was the feminine element behind my being that confused me. One early lesson led to another, and silence became a part of me (though Han rigorously insists otherwise). I kept my turmoil to myself, and listened. i'Do not readily expose your ignorance,'/i read one of my earliest primers, 'iwhen you may divine its remedy with context and careful attention.'/i

The former was sorely lacking. No one ever said to me, 'you mustn't say this' or 'never tell anyone that'- instead, these instructions were unspoken, understood. What EduDroids call 'incidental learning'. Refined people do not put their feet up on the table or read questionable works in public; cultured people do not say 'poodoo' or interfere with the programatic settings of household automation. I attached no especial significance to this for, as a very young child, the entire Galaxy- a thing I imagined as a brightly colored light-top kept spinning by Adults- seemed very esoteric indeed. My frustration was omnipresent, growing beside me like a second shadow. Conversations halted mid-sentence, or seemed to be composed only of furtive glances. By then, some five or six years into the reign of our Glorious Emperor (I omit quotation marks, knowing the sarcasm is thick enough already), reticence had become a way of life. It had been so since the inception of the Galactic Empire, but only then was I old enough to sense the constant underlying tension in the people around me and its painful spiking when certain subjects were broached.

I was a precocious child, not prone to playing with even the few available companions of my 'station'. This was likely a relief to my father, who- though he hated to deprive me of anything- must have been relieved to have one less guest with peering eyes and loose lips to worry about. I enjoyed my own play, yes, but I also listened at doors and air vents, learning to give all the appearance of absorption in lessons or entertainment whilst straining after the hushed voices of adults. I hid behind hedgerows and in shadowed thresholds. It was an era of concealment, and I soon appreciated the importance of guarding my mental horde of jewels.

The thing about secrets- which Luke still does not understand- is this: if you keep them long enough, they begin to keep you.

I garnered several leads about my origins from this surreptitious eavesdropping, turning them over, trying to fit them together like the colored geometric crystals that were my favorite toys. The endeavor came to me mostly at night, lost as all children are in the uncertainties that compose the world, all the little nuances- like the rising of the suns- in which adults have such luxury of faith. I thought there were three women in my life: my unknown birthmother, the woman who adopted me, and my Aiyah- who nursed me, watched over me, and vanished abruptly when I was eight.

If I seem callous regarding Breha Organa, that is not my intent. In all ways, she was my mother- caring, protective, attentive both to praising my gifts and correcting my faults. Biology is such a little thing, or so I tell myself. I remember toddling beside her in the gardens, flying the colored banners of High Summer festival together, and the patient way in which she began teaching me the complex dances of Alderaanian Court. She was a busy woman- beautiful, but far from ornamental, much to the irritation of the aristocratic old guard. No long afternoons reclining on dining couches, enduring the meandering conversations of nobility ostensibly gathered for the whichever charity was fashionable at the moment- not for her! iMaman/i- for I did call her so, and gladly, while I had her with me- believed the greatest impact for change could be made on the ground, via action. Certainly credit donations did very little when every system governor or Grand Moff skimmed copiously off the top for the privilege of helping their citizens (with whom they could rarely be bothered). Such pretended largesse disgusted her, though she was scrupulously careful about to whom she expressed such opinions.

Still, a compassionate, independent mindset could not go unremarked upon, especially in the Empire. I like to think- I hope- I was taking after her later, causing a stir in the Senate over this or that factual observation. It showed in everything she did; from toiling happily in her own garden, to marrying a self-made man like my father (no armigerous heritage, only a senator- such a step down!), and maintaining her own philosophical associations despite the fact many in the Empire shrank from the merest whiff of religion.

Palpatine never claimed godhood outright, but there really was no need. To do so would have allowed for the existence of something spiritual, some other realm, myriad definitions though each belief system might provide. That was unacceptable, since there can be no sallying forth to conquer the ineffable. Instead, he made himself the pinnacle of a narrow reality which excluded the very possibility of hope. The rich and poor alike slaved to serve the Empire, whose glory and perpetuity could be their only legacy. If one faired well in finance or prestige, it was only a logical reward for being more useful. Sitting on the throne of All and Everything, he thus acknowledged only that which could be seen, touched, and enumerated.

And dissected. Mustn't forget that.

Maman believed the universe could be refined by everyday actions. Kindness and charity were to be praised, but the most vital command was a negative one: ido no unkindness/i. Check oneself of harsh words, do not degrade others to comfort and empower yourself. There was always room for self improvement- some of us, I sometimes despaired, more than others. It was not that she chastised me, only that I felt the cacophonous silence within myself tinted also with chaos and envied her (and my Aiyah) her poise. This philosophy was taught openly on Alderaan along with many others- not really a religion at all, but a system for maintaining a peaceful social contract. It fell out of favor on most other worlds, being rather inimical to the propaganda of an everlasting State.

As I grew out of that awkward toddling stage, Maman came to be present at our home less and less. Child that I was, I believed (almost) implicitly what I was told: that she was away on Coruscant attending to political interests and valiantly (this seemed an odd choice of words, even then) representing our world in the Emperor's Court. Not much later, I came to understand that Palpatine was, among many other hideous and well-deserved epithets, a great hostage-taker. He surrounded himself with the loved ones of senators, governors, and even high-ranking military officers, creating a living shield of collateral damage, should someone take it in mind to engage in 'pathological anarchism'. It was also an excellent way to keep those whose loyalty he questioned from behaving too boldly. His Red Guard might be omnipresent, but their priority was the Emperor, and it was impossible to protect everyone all of the time. Accidents too, could never be fully foreseen.

Something might happen to someone, you know.

'Inviting' Maman to remain on the capital planet for long stretches made for multi-faceted punishment. It separated my parents, who loved each other deeply, and it kept her from her 'foundling brat'. Worse still, it lodged in my father's heart the fear that Palpatine might someday insist on my presence as well. It is only now that I can truly appreciate what terrifying metaphorical sword that must have been, especially if my father knew the truth. I'm convinced one of my parents did, at least- my documents were too well-forged, standing up to scrutiny time and time again, for all parties to be ignorant.

It was in this manner- the idle 'foundling brat' comment bruited about at balls and post-opera parties- that I learned I was a war orphan. Officially, no war had ever taken place, since the 'minor enforcement conflict' with insurrectionists had been solely the fault of an outdated system, highlighting the importance of transitioning from the Old Republic to the Empire. 'Old'- people were desperate to distance themselves even from the immediate past, marveling over the smooth function of a senate with little power, inundated by those disenfranchised in a war that could not possibly have happened.

Such where the contradictions we lived and breathed, daily.

If I was one of these- lost child of a 'peaceful transition'- then this rendered my birthmother effectively unknown and unknowable. I was once told she hailed from a water world and, along with other mothers, set me adrift in a raft whilst their floating village burned. I had been abandoned on the steps of a hospital on some industrial colony; I was the daughter of a spice smuggler's common-law wife, and she likely a pirate herself. A few times, I overheard speculation that my father got me on some poor secretary, and one adversarial fellow student at boarding school insisted she knew for a fact my mother had been a doxy- a camp follower of separatist officers.

Those last two, of course, came much later.

In another lifetime, I might have shared these varied histories with Han, once carbonite had stripped us both sufficiently bare. We do still marvel at times, over our disparate similarities- stubborn, inconvenient, possessed of pasts so changeable that we can and have reinvented ourselves at whim. He would have enjoyed the one about the spice smuggler, I think, because he's always claimed 'the most fun can be had when both out hands are dirty'. But such rebelliously morbid humor endured only the briefest possibility, when we had ourselves convinced we were who we appeared to be, rather than what we are. Have I seen all of his masks, all the variations of that rusty armor he shoulders with studied insouciance against the world? I don't believe so, any more than he has seen all of mine, though he is still my husband and my lover and my friend. Instead, masters of disguise, we pretend that victory was also an act of Creation (and I would argue that this can be true), spitting out a war-hero and his General-Princess right on the spot. In the face of truths impossible to escape or acknowledge, we circumscribe a world between the two of us and speak not of the distant past. Our sphere has demons of its own without borrowing, and it does not permit particular loud and irksome specters.

So I circle back, returning to the strange center of gravity within myself. iShe/i is there; chameleon, bright shadow. In the absence of my theoretical 'real' mother and Maman, I still had my Aiyah.

That I loved them both- Aiyah and Maman- goes without saying, but it costs me nothing to reiterate a fundamental truth. I loved them- not equally, but not disproportionately, either. In the same way some creatures may move about freely both in water and on land. How does quantify such a thing? With pain, unfortunately, more often than not. Familial or romantic, love can rend you seam to seam, leaving you in pieces that need to be sewn back up. That is why they say 'pull yourself together'- they claim your wits are scattered, but it really might be pieces of your heart. Like an impossible balancing act, perpetual defiance of logic and gravity. It made me feel safer to see Han taken aback when I lashed out, to see the walls come up behind those hazel eyes. iI/i could do that, make the great pirate and flying ace think twice. At the same time, I couldn't bear to see him that way- when you go about always in your armor, any visible flesh looks like a raw wound.

A fact with which, I'm sure, icertain/i beings are greatly acquainted.

How difficult must it have been, for those two women who anchored me into the world, their gravity held in constant tension with the invisible presence of a third who was somehow more "real"? I was a child- I wheedled, I sought permission from one when denied by the other. I am ashamed that the words "you're not my mother" passed my lips to both of them, on more than one occasion. If Luke may receive visitations and reassurances from the farthest reaches of the Force, then let it send me an emissary as well. I need no sage or patriarch with insistent urgings to climb holy mountains or move them myself. Send me instead, O Force, one of the goddesses of my childhood, so I can tell them I never, ever meant those things.

Give me Maman, so I may speak my contrition without a question at the end- make peace rather than hold out my nightmares of Vader like black molten coals taking the flesh off my palms.

Send the person I won't be tempted to ask, "How icould you/i?"

Aiyah was my nursemaid, my confidant, and my friend. Dressed plainly, we might go out to the market with my status unrecognized, or amble unchallenged in the emerald cathedral of the forest. She taught me to swim (very unladylike) and how to play the electric lute (much more acceptable). For years she was my sole tutor- mathematics, linguists, sociology, calligraphy, and even a little programming. It never occurred to me, then, to wonder at her strange erudition, which provided so much more depth than the ready-made parcels of 'acceptable knowledge' dispensed at Imperial Education Centers. How neat they were, those factory-stamped histories to which I was later exposed, droids leading students in chanting sequences by rote. This happened on this date, this occurrence on that planet- no reason, no cost, no spirit of the times. My matriculation in the formal education system came much later and, having already been exposed to Aiyah's tutelage, I came to see the complex tangle of crys-fibers behind the clean lines of the official narrative. At first, in the superior manner of any adolescent, I felt amused, but this quickly turned to fear. The sort of bolting terror that wakes you in the night, seeming to fuse all your bones, and it was accompanied by a deep disgust for the skeletal Emperor who presumed to 'unhappen' whole series of events.

When my parents were both away, I slept with Aiyah in the tiny cottage she occupied adjacent to the main house. Her quarters were modest, but magical to me. Much of what she owned was old or worn, yet these items gained weight through their obvious and unspoken histories. The secrets they would never tell, the snatches of melody that might be extracted by a patient antiquarian. From her I learned the potent texture of the world beneath the world, the dreadful power of symbols, and a mysticism at once more and less practical than that of Maman. Both told me stories of great heroines, both assured me that- like these women of myth- I was much more than my title. These tales were as similar and unkindred to one another as my love for each teller; past articulation, but equal to the certainty with which I would be able to distinguish the touch of their individual hands in the dark.

I learned of all of my masks from Aiyah and Maman. Both were different around other people, though I did not always consciously understand that or the impetus behind the change. Maman was a princess by birth and Queen by election- I inherited my title from her. Of noble stock, she was somewhat ostracized, openly disavowed by her family for 'polluting the bloodline'. Once such a thing would have seemed foolish- outdated, and downright ignorant- my father said. But a great sea-change had rolled through the galaxy, as though Palpatine were some malign sorcerer from a story, arriving at the Armistice Ball to cry, 'Unmask! Unmask!'. Many did, casting aside pretenses to tolerance and uttering notions which, only years prior, would have seemed pitiable. I will not blame the Emperor for this entirely. Despicable sarlaac-charmer that he was, he only drew on the seeds of hatred- or at least solipsistic assumptions- which must have already existed. It was fashionable to be prejudiced (I'discerning'/i)- it showed good taste. People dusted off pejoratives that hadn't been spoken in decades, and it was generally agreed that the Empire's 'involuntary indenture' of non-humans- Wookies, Mon Calamarri, and Twi'lek, to name just a few- was a sign of 'superior' civilization taking such beings under their wing. Human slavery, condemned by the Old Republic, continued just as openly, but with far less remark.

When certain Alderaanian nobles or politicos did condescend to visit, my father and Maman suffered their presence without flinching, never acknowledging the subtle digs which might be made in front of off-worlders. To the galaxy at large, my father was successful and powerful, if sometimes a bit too bold for their comfort. Even in Aldera, he was much admired. Only the most ancient hold-outs made a point of being insultingly polite. In relating this, I mean no censure towards Alderaan itself. Peaceful, beautiful, dedicated to academics and the arts, I was and am grateful for the definition and identity it provided. Yet nowhere is safe from baser sentient drives, from those who must believe themselves superior lest their sense of self and reality dissolve. A weakness difficult to pity, my father said, because it did so much to harm the innocent.

My father taught me about perception; Maman and Aiyah taught me how to manage it.

I was in attendance at many of these meals and functions, where we all exercised a great deal of restraint in not leaping to our loved ones' defense. It was all display, you see. A dance.

i'Lord Organa, you daughter- quite the beauty. Such a lovely face, though perhaps too tan, for a lady.'/i Murmurs amidst painted faces, suggestions of more genteel exercises for a proper young girl. The hollow clink of their bracelets as they reached for more fire wine.

i'The little Princess, she is very clever. It is not wise, however, to speak too much. Best to save one's contributions for the right time.'/i Tolerant smiles from men whose flesh seemed unreal beneath their Imperial uniforms, as if they were granted reality only by virtue of unquestioning obedience. Maman might catch my gaze later, or briefly squeeze my hand beneath the table, facing her own share of barbs. Her support of Alderaanian philosophy, her projects to preserve our democratic history… it needn't be so ipolitical/i, you see. Every syllable of condemnation was elaborately wrapped in polite words and required compliments. It was like fencing with an opponent who lived in a mirror.

Good practice for the Senate, anyway.

I envied my Aiyah, who could disappear so completely when such circuses alighted at the Organa Palace. Not hide nor hair of her, even in the kitchen or the servitor's stairway. She would always carefully attend to any questions I might have afterwards; the insecurities and doubts I could not- wanting so badly to be deserving of her- share with Maman.

i'When people ask you difficult or uncomfortable questions, inquire about their preferences and you won't have to say a word going forward.'/i This from Maman, laughing wryly. i'People do love to talk about themselves.'/i

And from Aiyah, i'Acting naturally is one of the most difficult dramatic tasks.'/i Or, i'Appearances never conceal anything, if you look closely enough.'/i

I was dissatisfied with these bits of wisdom on all fronts, but particularly in regards to that last one. Who needed such fine disguises when other people's eyes turned out only to be mirrors? I pouted, I sought play even less lady-like than before. I was never punished for this, only occasionally reminded that there were limits. It was all so complicated; I thought Aiyah could solve things more efficiently if she just taught ime/i how to become invisible as well.

(I had no way of knowing, of course, that her greatest vanishing act was to come.)

The analogy wasn't as childish as it might seem. People seldom spoke of or acknowledged her- even other aides, bodyguards, or household droids. She was 'the woman' or 'your nurse', flitting about on the periphery, very nearly a phantom. Rich hair concealed beneath intricate but practical wrappings, hooded or sometimes even veiled, she moved with confidence and went unchecked. My parents treated her well, but with carefully distant compassion, and rarely did they interact with her. She was just Aiyah- at once mysterious and familiar, furtive and sad but possessed also of great liberty and determination. No one could pin her down.

By this, I should perhaps have known she was also my birth mother.

I wonder what it must have been like, surrendering her rightful title, only to remain a diminished- if vital- part of her daughter's childhood. What stirred in Maman's heart when I callously, childishly made as if to show preference; what arrangement allowed them to simultaneously acknowledge and ignore one another's existence? I was a wanted child, Maman never left me in doubt of that. It is only now, with shards to truth so slim they are almost more misleading than lies, that I question Aiyah's motives. Was it that she loved me so much she stayed, or did she love Luke enough to leave? A stupid, immature proposition. I have already said love cannot be weighed or measured against itself. The story is incomplete: there will always be variables of which I am unaware, amorphous combinations of people and events no more substantial than shadow dancers projected on a silken screen.

Like all shadows, the figures are swallowed up entirely when darkness falls.

There is- iwas/i- a season on Alderaan of brief warmth and copious rain steadied between the two harvest periods and quite distinct from High Summer. (How I still struggle with treacherous tenses in regards to my home. As if, by indulging in the present tense, I might somehow keep a part of it alive, spinning blissfully in what is now only an asteroid field.) This season brought my birthday and one year, just as I turned six, the death of Maman.

My father had suffered many an Admiral or Inquisitor to lodge with us during First Harvest. There was no denying a polite request to play 'host' whenever an Imperial personage deemed your home 'charming' or convenient for their assignments. While I sensed the increased tension and the thickening texture of silences, the primary affect of this quartering was- to my young mind- the lucky chance to stay with Aiyah almost constantly, being brought to the main house only for certain suppers. On those occasions, I was to keep entirely silent unless spoken to, an event so rare I was forced to amuse myself by watching the majority of the officers mishandle their cutlery. For the most part, Aiyah and I remained secluded in her little bungalow, with the shutters latched tight. The rain was a deluge that year and the change in my living arrangements excited no especial suspicion from me. I was always happy to be with my Aiyah. Because she was so ephemeral to others, I felt she was all the more my own, and the 'holiday' from the main house increased the aura of benign conspiracy around the two of us.

The Emperor must have been extremely suspicious of my father, even then. Though we never discussed it, my entry into adolescence brought with it the realization that Maman's death was meant as both a punishment and a warning. She perished on the Imperial Capital; supposedly, it was a violent and unexpected reaction to one or another of the exotic fruits served at the Emperor's endless banquets. Palpatine bemoaned the tragedy, beheaded one or two of the cooks he'd likely wanted killed anyway, and compassionately sent her ashes home to my father in a silver urn.

This in itself was an insult, for Alderaan has never burned her dead. My father was forced to inter these meager remains in the hermetically sealed family sepulcher, knowing his corpse would never have a hand to hold- as was the custom for all married couples- down through all the centuries to follow. On our world, the dead remained secret and sacred, residing as they had for millennia in their own necropolises, which seemed like miniature cities humming with anti-life. Idols might have fallen, gods might have been outlawed or abandoned, but the dead kept their own counsel and did not have to tolerate such nonsense.

My father brought me with him to the spaceport, along with a traditional honor guard for the body, though the Emperor's gross violation of custom rendered the latter technically unnecessary. He did not do this to be morbid, or to provide closure (what a strange, Coruscanti concept!), or even to teach me- though I learned a valuable lesson indeed. He took me along blindly, for his eyes seemed to see nothing and no one, moving as though in the throes of some brain-fever against which the body's only defense is threadbare numbness.

The Palace- the City- the whole of the world was mourning, but all traditional modes and markers of grief in our home had been arranged by the servants, under Aiyah's careful direction. Such obvious initiative was rare for her, but none resented it. The entire household had loved its Lady and Queen, wanting to honor her but not quite having the temerity- given my father's fugue- to step forward and say how things should be done. They were relieved when Aiyah took charge. My father, meanwhile, navigated the bureaucratic labyrinth of the bereaved, which the Emperor had only rendered more loathsome with his various surcharges and dictates. He handled what was unavoidable, necessary, but ionly/i that. All else seemed beyond him; he would sit in random alcoves of the garden or in my mother's library and stare sightlessly at his hands until someone came to fetch him for this or that urgent matter.

At night, he called me to his study, allowing me to nod myself to sleep over enormous illustrated tomes, swallowed by the big faux-fur chair. Under normal circumstances, this was a room I rarely entered- not from prohibition, but from lack of motivating reason. Collector of secrets and whisperings though I was, my parent's own wariness and the hidden flow of defiance through our home was palpable enough to infect me. The caution was contagious, until I wondered if perhaps ithat/i wasn't what had killed Maman- a sort of consumptive disease, secrets replicating like a virus until the host could hold no more. The sudden loss, the changes and other unfathomable happenings all around me, became disturbing in ways I could not articulate. I was out of context, yet my father gently discouraged me from retiring to my own chambers. It was only years later, remembering his face in the firelight, his determined sipping of dragon-fruit whiskey combined with his continued numbed self-possession, that I realized he was afraid of his aloneness. Of his own empty bed. Better we camp together, perhaps, as warriors once took to the Triplehorn Mountains when forced to regroup.

I did not mention crossing the courtyard to stay with my Aiyah, though I wanted to. Guilt gnawed at my insides as I bit my lips, for I felt I had betrayed Maman somehow. I should have pined for her more while she was on Coruscant, instead of enjoying my time at the little cottage that seemed so much a part of another world. Was this the price paid for inappropriate happiness, or had Maman vanished from my neglect?

Without a body, nothing seemed final. The cremation was so outside our norm that it did not make sense to me. It was a grave blasphemy, and we were soon forced to perpetrate worse. Along with his supposed condolences and commiserations, the Emperor sent word that the throne of Alderaan- smithed from particolored quartz-steel in time out of mind- would henceforth remain empty. There would be no new regnant selected from the Cabinet, and certainly no election. Alderaan had a system governor- what more could be need save the tender auspices of his Imperial Majesty? Out of compassion for Queen Breha, the proclamation continued, he had allowed her continued reign- now he bade I might keep my title in her memory, but nothing else. Even my father, prince by virtue of marriage, must return to the address of 'Senator'. This precluded holding the funeral of state my mother truly deserved, leaving my father and I standing with only six guards on the landing platform in their ochre robes of morning. iIsabelline/i, I believe they call it- that particular grey-cream color that is a staple of Alderaanian grief. I have never seen anything like it, elsewhere. This and shades of lemon or gold are considered appropriate signs of mourning- jarring dyes that disquiet the vision, used by warriors on other worlds to intimidate their enemy.

The more vivid the color, the greater and more personal the regret.

Did I cry as my father and I rode through the empty streets of Alderaa? The flyer was open; he held the urn in his lap while all around us the world was as silent as the necropolis which was our ultimate destination. Beyond shutters and curtains, beyond thresholds uncrossed in accordance with the Emperor's edict against public gathering, the whole city wore yellow. One could see it through cracks, in pots of berries left out to spoil because they would reach just that hue, reflected in windows by more daring phantoms. Occasionally, distant sobbing might be heard from one abode or another. Yes, I did cry- more from terror at the hollow capital than any real understanding of what I had lost. I remember the feel of the rose-ash smeared traditionally across my brow; how, at the end of the ride, it had blurred and run from the excessive sweat of my anxiety. I was afraid that the world was unpeopling, disappearing at the wave of some far off, wizened hand.

Oh, how little did I know then!

What can death mean, to a six year-old? What could it mean to me at barely eight, with Aiyah gone- at nineteen, all lost things whirling with the rubble about a center of gravity which had ceased to exist? From the vanishment of one or two to absolute erasure, all too overwhelming to comprehend. The only familial body I have ever seen- and only because Luke came to me so solemnly to ask for help- is…

Well.

I did not look at the face beneath the mask, or even at the mask which was- to me- his face. Instead I starred at the remaining, ponderous leather hand, which itself was a trick and not real flesh at all. Only leather over cybernetic components, metal bones aping life. In my mind's eye I could see that armored claw fisted, stealing the breath of Captain Antilles, of Han. Vividly, I recalled it deflecting blaster-bolts, directing the interrogation droid, digging into my upper arm as Tarkin gave the order and I struggled to turn my own face away.

Sometimes, my mind betrays me. Well, everyone's does, at some point. It is, as the Twi'lek philosopher said, the unique curse of sentience. When that happens, the cannibal scrape of my own inward blade, I dream. Not the recollection of some past personal anecdote or the chaotic flotsam of the day's events, but something else. Painfully clear, but also dark and obscure, as though projected on a ebon wall. I see Aldera, still and silent as it was during Maman's not-funeral. The streets are teeming with people, though, as they would have been on any other day. Soundless, soundless; the figures move, but only the wind (too regular, too even) produces noise. The city is awash in gold- primrose, canary, and citrine shades riot amidst robes, gowns, and tunics. As if it is the only color that exists.

It was 13:36 Galactic Standard Time when the Death Star entered Alderaan's orbit. Night, in the south eastern islands of the Opal Sea, whence so much of my father's family hailed. No such luck for the capital: it would have been High Hour, with the day in full swing. And so my mind conjures the city, brimming despite its haunting muteness, streets clogged with speeders, hydrotrains, and those going on foot to some food stand or market near their place of employ. As one, they cease their noiseless bustle; clad in the color of grief, they turn their faces to the unnatural moon which has come to disrupt their clear blue sky. The wind is at a hissing pitch, the sound of his breathing as he holds me before Tarkin and I foolishly produce the name of Dantooine. There is a slight susurration in the endless crowd. A parting of lips, perhaps, but no time or forewarning to scream.

Then the world- the whole of it, dissolving- is yellow.


End file.
